


consider this

by greymahariel (acceptnosubstitutes)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Tumblr Prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-04-26 14:46:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5008756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acceptnosubstitutes/pseuds/greymahariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it's hard to remember a significant portion of their relationship has little to do with sex at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. reacting to the other one crying about something

**Author's Note:**

> SO! I started something new without finishing that fic. The one hovering at halfway done.
> 
> /fails
> 
> Couldn't get the idea out of my head, when I saw the prompt list on tumblr, which is actually how 22 kisses came into existence as well. Sensing a pattern.
> 
> Fandom needs more bullavellan tho.
> 
> P.S. - While we're here - TRESPASSER SPOILERS. Just assume all the spoilers. Do I still need a trespasser one? Idk? Eh.

Lavellan steps away from the eluvian to let the others through, blinks and tilts his head to the side. Swallows over a sudden tight, hot knot in his chest squeezing harder the more he tries to ignore it. He frowns, irritably. 

They dealt with the Viddasala and...Solas, but the Exalted Council remains. And with the way he ran out on them already, they’re sure to be impatient and probably extremely unamused at another delay. 

He doesn’t have time to deal with whatever this is. His body rebels more and more, however, and he stumbles his next step, reaching out to steady himself against the nearby wall with an arm that’s no longer completely there.

Right. Gonna...take some getting used to.

Lavellan turns toward the advisors, barely resisting flinching at Josephine’s gasp. The tightening of Cullen’s face. Even Divine - Leliana’s brows draw together, her face softening.

He very deliberately does not follow the path their eyes travel. Yet the pressure in his chest constricts again, and seems to be spreading. 

The absence of an arm feels sore, in a way. Which is absurd, because the actual pain is gone. Those electric twinges that always took him by surprise, making his hands shake just enough to affect his bow grip. 

Made him grit his teeth even as his fingers clenched around wood hard enough to drive deep grooves into the palm of his hands.

Hadn't been the deep, unidentifiable ache always vibrating out from his left arm (his bow arm) since the end of Corypheus. 

No, this driving force the fact holding his bow, drawing and notching an arrow, became downright impossible some days and harder than it should all together.

Now. Well, now it doesn’t really matter anymore.

Heat spreads up his neck and into his cheeks, behind his eyes weighing them down like anchors. Lavellan keeps his eyes open, despite the strain, the sudden blurring of his vision. The clear, defined shapes of the advisors muddle into bursts of color - the bright yellow of Josephine’s outfit, Leliana’s disheveled red hair, peeking out from under her tall hat of office.

Damn it all.

“Boss?”

A heavy hand lands on his shoulder, turning Lavellan to face his companions. The ones who know. Who know, who know, and who _know_ now. 

How...utterly wrong he’s been his entire life. How wrong his people have been longer. 

The Creators, the vallaslin, the reality of a dream. A dream he’d held somewhere deep, somewhere private, of things that had been even as he tried to live for the future.

The moment.

Rough skinned fingers brush against his cheek and Lavellan starts, badly, looking up at Bull. His view clouds the qunari into blobs of grey and black, and he is absurdly reassured he can’t see how Bull is looking at him right now.

Or Dorian. Or Varric. Or...anyone.

They must be so disappointed.

Bull heaves a sudden sigh, twining his fingers in Lavellan’s hair and pulls him forward, right up against him.

“Kadan.”

Salt tracks stain his cheeks and have for Creators - for _who knows_ how long.

It’s, it’s just too much. All of a sudden, it’s too much. 

Maybe it always was, or this, everything that has happened since the fall of Corypheus finally came to a head.

Somewhere, Lavellan had known.

Had waited for something he couldn’t name to fracture and upset the new tentative, quiet peace. So much so he became an insomniac, driving Bull to real, actual frustration what worked before couldn’t keep Lavellan down for the entire night anymore.

Who knows when he snakes his arms around Bull’s waist. When he buries his face into his chest in front of everyone, and holds tight. 

Takes a moment to understand those shuddering wet, hiccuping sobs come from _his_ throat and that his body trembles fine, uncontrollable tremors.

Bull’s fingers smooth through his hair, then dip down his back. Repeats the motion like that again and again. So gentle.

“Kadan,” he says, “you did good. You do good.”

The hand returns to his head and stays there, even if Bull does not, crouching down so as to peer at Lavellan’s face. His own pinch at the corners of the eyes, but still remains undeniably so, so soft, the way he looks at him. Bull wipes away the tears across his cheeks and pulls him in.

Again.

Kisses the top of his head, such a chaste thing from him. Remains there, breath warm and comforting as it stirs Lavellan’s hair.

“Kadan, you _are_ good. So, so good,” he breathes into red, arm reflexively tightening around Lavellan’s back.

Murmuring around them reminds Lavellan this isn’t a private moment; he draws in a few, steadying breaths that aren’t much helpful at all but _this is not the time_.

Bull won’t let him go. Won’t stop slowly smoothing his hand down Lavellan’s back or the steady stream of words alone that, bit by bit, begin to calm him.

And absurdly, surely, he’s reassured.


	2. wearing each other's clothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Non-sexual intimacy prompt: 'Wearing each other's clothing'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I doubt these things will be very long (sorry), more like artistic bursts of half-decent writing. Blobs.
> 
> Also. _Schmooples_.

Faint light filters into the room through open balcony doors, spilling onto the bed and lighting up an inviting strip of skin. Bull crosses the room, letting the bedroom door close softly behind him. As the balcony doors swing close seconds later and the latch clicks, the figure barely visible under all the blankets stirs, muttering.

Bull huffs a quiet laugh, crouches down next to the bed and waits.

Some shuffling around, a light snuffling, and finally a mop of red hair peeks out from under the covers. In the dim light, Lavellan’s half-lidded golden eyes glow.

They dart around the room they can see for the intruder, finally landing on the giant shadow beside the bed. Lavellan’s ears twitch, dipping low against his head before springing back. The elf ducks his head, such a soft, happy tilt to his lips and Bull pretends not to notice.

“Hey, Bull,” Lavellan says, rubbing at one eye with a yawn.

Bull shifts, preparing an answer, when Lavellan stretches his entire body with a satisfied grunt, eyes closed and ears twitching about again. His fingers twist and grip in the blankets surrounding his sudden tumble onto his side, only ending in pushing them further down his body.

Bull pauses.

For the sheets falling aside, at least partially, barely clinging to the side of one hip and splayed over themselves along his legs, reveals the rest of his little elf’s body to him.

Normally such a sight is enough to bring Bull to full attention, focused on mapping out the details he knows a hundred times over but never fails to simply amaze him.

This. _His_.

But Lavellan’s hardly naked underneath, and Bull is forced to admit, if only this time, he hardly minds.

The sleeves flow out over his arms and hands a length that would be ridiculous and tease-worthy in any other situation. But here they’re sleep rumpled, one pushed halfway up a bicep and slender, clever, little fingers fisted in the overlong end of the other. Half of the collar lies flattened on one shoulder, perhaps from the weight of Lavellan’s head as he slept in his ever fascinatingly strange positions. And the neckline.

It’s meant for a much larger man, who very much hates wearing said garments generally and _especially_ out under the heat of a sweltering sun.

On Lavellan, the neckline of his nightshirt branches wide across his shoulders, almost slipping off one side entirely. It bares the majority of his chest and stomach, tapering down the valley of a ‘v’ almost…right where…

Bull exhales a rough breath.

But, of course, Lavellan’s bunched up the remaining fabric and deftly knotted it to his side. Enough to tantalizingly dip well past his navel, but then shying off.

The hemline of the shirt still brushes Lavellan mid-thigh, enough to imitate the illusion of a dress. Even if Bull’s half sure it’d leave the backside quite…well, bare.

Lavellan smiles, this lopsided tilt to his lips accompanied by partially pressing his face into the bed as though shy. Which this elf is anything _but_ , and Bull would place good money on a ruse if he didn’t well know Lavellan is notoriously a grumpy early riser.

Which means the elf has no idea what he looks like right now, how soft, how _vulnerable_. White, soft fabric over golden brown skin only accented further by the rivers of red snaking haphazardly about from a messy pony.

Lavellan _had_ been letting his hair grow out over the past year and a half since Corypheus kicked the bucket. Hardly what Bull’s really focusing on. But also the only thought swimming around his head right now.

“You’re staring,” Lavellan sing-songs softly, struggling to keep his eyes open and focused on Bull.

Early. Right, it’s early and Bull’s intruding. He’d only really meant to peek in on the Inquisitor, maybe steal a kiss, before returning to the tavern to let Lavellan wake at his own pace.

“You’re wearing my shirt.”

It’s not often Bull fumbles for a response, and Lavellan’s only too sleepy warm to capitalize on it.

The elf fully closes his eyes now, face scrunching up like anytime Sera persuades him against better judgment to try her culinary creations. But his mouth also twitches in time to those ears, moving between sour and sweet so fast Bull’s never really seen anyone quite so expressive in their sleep.

“Smells like you.”

Lavellan hums, reaching without sight to tug at his arm. His hand slips away while he slowly rolls over, and then over again back and forth to catch the blankets around him.

Like a cocoon.

Bull chuckles. Then takes the obvious offer and lets his harness fall to the ground unheeded.


	3. holding hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Non-sexual intimacy prompt: holding hands.
> 
> Err...in this case, maybe 'hand' in Lavellan's case? Ehehehe. I'll shut up now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I guess some wild Solas/m!Lavellan wandered in here. Shoo!
> 
> Though I figured I oughta change the relationship section, currently it only matters for this chapter. Maybe. Idk. I make this shit up as I go why are you reading this.
> 
> P.S. - What the fuck color are Solas' eyes?

Night air brushes his cheeks, considerably cooler than the room behind him, close - he can still hear the fire in the fireplace crackling away if he concentrates. Cold enough he probably shouldn’t still be outside, but well.

One moment he’s alone to the cold air and the night, the next a large, thick arm wraps around his waist. Lavellan starts, but soon relaxes.

Bull.

“You know I don’t like it when you do this,” Bull says, almost conversationally.

Lavellan grasps the balcony railing a little tighter, experimentally kicking his feet against the bars from his perch. Bull’s grip on him tightens, hand curling around his hip and fingers tapping against the fabric of his pants, warm even through the material.

“I -,” Lavellan exhales a slow breath, turning his face up at the sky. “Needed to think.”

“On the railing.”

It isn’t a question, like Josephine, but it isn’t an accusation either - Sera’s immediate concern and quick anger to cover. They needn’t worry. Lavellan’s well aware how high up he is, the distance to the ground. 

“I’ve climbed taller trees.”

Needless. Bull doesn’t need a response and Lavellan isn’t even offering an excuse. But sometimes? It’s just better to say something, to hear his own voice out loud.

Lavellan licks at cracked lips and shrugs. Bull just hums, briefly squeezing him in a one armed hug.

They sit in silence for a while, watching stars twinkle to life in the sky. Lavellan draws in a breath, good hand moving in small, halting inches from the railing settling finally on Bull’s, arm still drawn around him and hand still on his hip.

Without a word Bull moves behind him, close, and Lavellan leans back into his solidarity. 

Lavellan licks his lips again, wincing at one slow swipe that irritates the particularly sensitive skin at the corner of his mouth there. 

There’s this small tin stuffed somewhere in the haphazard mess of his dresser, a salve of some sort that soothes the hurt even as it burns seconds after application. But it’s a pleasant kind of burn, somehow, and smells thickly of mint leaves.

Solas made it for him after catching him at wetting his lips to no satisfaction one too many times the chill, biting cold of some of Skyhold’s days. Clucked his tongue at him, like a mother hen, and it made Lavellan grin even though the movement stung. 

Moved to tease, even, but Solas beat him to the punch.

Swiped a thumb through the smooth salve while the cool fingers of his other hand gently angled the side of Lavellan’s face his way. And then applied it himself, touch lingering just a hint too long.

Steel met gold and. And that _look_. Intimate as a kiss.

Lavellan hasn’t forgotten it. 

He lets the quiet linger between him and Bull a few beats longer, fingers unconsciously curling into the back of Bull’s hand.

“Bull, you, you told me once. You think people can love more than one person?”

Bull huffs at him, then dips his head so his mouth rests in the red mess of Lavellan’s over long hair.

“Not exactly a new concept boss,” he says. Sounds amused.

Lavellan sighs, elbowing him in the side and ignoring his bark of a laugh.

“You know what I meant,” he says, “like...like that. More than just friends.” 

“Sure,” Bull says, easy, like it really is, “Know it’s weird for you folks in the south, but.”

Lavellan feels Bull shrug, even if he can’t see it. There’s another stretch of quiet. Except this time it’s tense, full of some unsaid potential.

Until Bull breaks it.

“This ‘bout you and Solas, kadan?”

Bull’s too perceptive, sometimes, but since Lavellan had been angling to get this out in the open but had shit all motive to actually _talk_ about it...he supposes he can’t really complain.

Instead, he shifts, pushing himself further into the qunari’s warmth. It really is cold, now.

Lavellan still doesn’t really know what to say. How to go on. He and Solas are...are...well, fuck. What the fuck are they?

_I do not need to call you vhenan for you to know where it lies, do I?_

Lavellan scrunches his face up, frustrated.

“Solas,” he tries, hating the way his breath hitches on the name. “Back at that fortress. With the Viddasala. He’s serious Bull. He means it.”

Bull hums again, low, the vibration a comforting purr as he embraces Lavellan fully and shields him from a sudden strong gust of wind.

When it passes, Bull doesn’t let go.

“Solas never was for half measures, kind of elf,” Bull says, pauses to chuckle at something only he knows. “‘Course he meant what he said.”

Meant what he said about tearing down the Fade and meant the personal too, what he said to Lavellan before that mirror and an army of lifeless stone qunari.

When Bull spells it out for him like that, it seems simple. So fucking simple. Of course Solas meant it, Bull says. Of course.

“What if I can’t do it?”

It slips out without Lavellan really meaning, this thing that’s been eating at him ever since Solas walked into a mirror and left him hapless and lopsided.

What if I can’t change his mind? What if I have to kill him? What if I can’t?

So many questions Lavellan can’t voice Bull picks up on anyway, naturally, though his reaction startles the elf. 

He pulls back, away, letting Lavellan go and Lavellan twists at the waist to look at him. Only to see the qunari hold out a hand toward him.

“It’s cold, boss,” is all he says.

There’s something there, in the way he looks at Lavellan. The elf can’t explain it, except. Except that it makes Lavellan release a breath, shoulders relaxing from their tight knit position he hadn’t even noticed.

He swings his legs over the railing, taking the offered help without complaint. Bull steadies Lavellan when his feet land on solid ground, but he doesn’t release his good hand immediately like the elf expects.

Instead, Bull turns it over in his own, palm up, smoothing his thumb over rough callouses built up from years of bowstring snapping against Lavellan’s skin. 

Unexpectedly, Bull gives a soft laugh.

“So small,” he explains, tracing aimless patterns across his palm. “Always so damn small. It’s weird, okay, but I always wondered.”

Lavellan tilts his head, but doesn’t pull away. Bull’s touch is comforting, like always.

“How such small hands were big enough to shore up all the world’s problems.”

Large fingers curl up over Lavellan’s palm, engulfing it so completely the only color Lavellan can see is grey.

He looks up to Bull’s grin and a solid squeeze.

“Lucky mine’s bigger.”


	4. having their hair washed by the other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Non-sexual intimacy prompt: 'Having their hair washed by the other'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fail at updating anything resembling regularly.
> 
> Some fun with Mythal and the Well of Sorrows.

It happens.

Breakfast - quiet hall, not even all the usual companions and only a few, hazy eyed soldiers yawning into closed fists. Lavellan stills, bread in one hand and knife raised in the other.

The noise it makes clattering to the floor sounds to Bull like gatlok, close to the ear. 

His utensil may be on the floor, but Lavellan’s fingers remain poised in grip and that damnable marked hand flares to life with a crackle, soft hiss of danger.

Lavellan stares Varric straight in the face, but his eyes see without seeing, gold fixed and glazed to the glittering markings of the same color flaring to life across his cheeks.

Bull doesn’t even hear what sprouts from the redhead’s lips, not the least for he wouldn’t understand it.

Solas sets his jaw tightly, pushes away from the table and leaves the room without a second glance back.

That, too, is deafening.

With Solas’ departure - the second time - Lavellan seems to worsen. Spends more and larger chunks of time in dazed haze, something foreign lighting gold in all the wrong ways. When he’s back, when he’s _Lavellan_ , he starts with such skittish eyes, hunches in to make himself smaller that it leaves Bull to believe the she-elf reached across time immemorial straight into the qunari’s chest.

Twist and squeezed.

A small hand once sure and steady - once two - clever in ways Bull’s much longer fingers almost ache to imagine, trembles. And Lavellan clenches a fist, nails imprinting deep into his palm.

Once. Twice. Again and again. Bull doesn’t bother counting past double digits.

When they’re alone, Lavellan’s door actually locked instead of merely closed (both doors), Bull drags out the porcelain tub and draws a bath. Waits for the water to heat the air into steam.

He carries Lavellan to his bed and gently lays the elf down, undresses him in movements both utilitarian but also soft. Lavellan speaks his nonsense words and Bull hums, hefting him up and back into his arms.

Ignores the way the elf’s head lolls onto his shoulder. The wet smears against his skin.

Lavellan shows some life when he eases him into the bathwater, hisses, and swears in that melodic elvish language words Bull does recognize. Brings the edges of Bull’s mouth quirking, curling up in guarded smile.

Bull tsks at the lengths of red splayed through his fingers, one hand supporting Lavellan’s head above water and the other arranging his hair into something less resembling knots.

Then he lets Lavellan sink fully into the bath, chuckles at an overlong, exhaled sigh, and gets to working in a little shampoo. Bright bursts of pine, cedar maybe, some oakmoss and amber scent the air around them.

Lavellan’s shoulders finally relax to Bull’s massaging fingers against his scalp, enough that ducking him under for a quick rinse does not descend into more gibberish and tears when the elf emerges again.

Bull eases back, and Lavellan sits up in the tub fully. Occupies himself with a brisk and short wash of the rest of his limbs and torso. When Bull lifts him out of the water once he’s finished, he dries the elf off and wraps him up in that fluffy, ridiculous robe Madame de Ferr simply insisted Lavellan accept as a nameday gift that surprised everyone, including Lavellan himself.

He looks good, though, in soft white cloth - like a miniature candle, still burning bright red despite the way Lavellan starts murmuring broken bits of what sounds like a one sided conversation. Until he pauses, waits for a reply from no one, and swears again. This time in Common.

“There we are,” Bull says, marking the end of the long cycle of here’s Lavellan, there he goes and back again.

The voices, wills, whatever...seem to instinctively let up when Lavellan turns in for the night. Short respite, but one Bull won’t question.

“Mmm,” Lavellan murmurs, agreed, and curls up tighter against Bull’s chest when they’re both settled in bed for the night.

Bull rubs up and down the elf’s arms, pressing a kiss into the warm wet of his hair. Lavellan drifts off, at last content. And Bull settles in to wait for the first, faint light of dawn.

Beginning the cycle anew.


	5. sharing a bed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at least AT LEAST i updated in the same...year, as last time?
> 
> /hides

There’s something about lingering - some illicit thrill, behind countless lectures on punctuality, mindfulness he’s heard a hundred times over - in bed in the early mornings. Better still with Lavellan draped over him like a blanket.

The elf lies naked, as does the Bull, but a different energy sets in these intermissions between sleep and action. 

Lavellan twitches in his sleep, ears moving kitten-like and more than the rest of his body. They always have, something that amuses Bull and that he’s noticed sets the Inquisitor (all Dalish, even) apart from those elves who dwell in human cities.

A type of freedom maybe. Or defiance.

Bull breathes in deep, lungs fill slow with air, and his hands begin impulsive wandering. His fingertips graze Lavellan’s broad shoulders, stopping briefly in admiration. Bull smooths the span of his hand across skin there and hums when toned muscles flex underneath while Lavellan burrows closer.

The Bull moves on.

Down the plane of Lavellan’s back next, tiptoeing down in a way the elf shudders and huffs in annoyance. 

Bull takes care not to wake him. 

Not that he wants to hide his lazy exploration of Lavellan’s body or is even ashamed to meet gold eyes and read reaction to Bull’s touches face to face. They’ve spent several nights where the only intimacy between them lay in the dance of touch and nothing further.

This, Bull simply wishes for himself.

Near Lavellan’s waist, Bull pauses and branches a wide arc along a deep set scar. One of only a few - dangerous - attacks to ever pierce his armor. Bull worries at his lower lip, teeth baring in a snarl. That wound he remembers. Vividly.

A high dragon, the Sandy Howler, if he remembers correct (and his memory rarely fails him). Nasty brute, even for a dragon, all whipcord muscle and razor sharp teeth. Temper to match.

Hardened barbs of bone lined her tail in rows except near the narrow tip, small enough Bull barely even paid attention when they tore into his shoulder and gained spatters of color for their trouble. He’d snarled then, too; maybe he laughed a booming threat toward her snorting puffs of fire that followed.

Lavellan barely made a sound. Initially. 

He'd been taken by surprise, having stopped to assist Varric up from the ground in a moment he (incorrectly) assumed a lull in the battle. His back to the dragon, the elf made an easy target.

Which she realized, at roughly the same time as the Iron Bull. 

The Howler’s tail arced with serpentine grace but the force of a battering ram. Made the air crack in passage. 

Lavellan’s cut-off, choked gasp for air. Varric, eyes wide and hands braced to catch his descent. Too much damn _distance_ between Bull and the ground into which they crashed.

Bull grits his teeth and lets his fingers skate along pass the raised, roughened skin somewhere he much more enjoys.

Repeatedly, and usually darkened from the force of sound smacks. 

The Bull chuckles to himself, cupping a supple, round cheek. He squeezes, and Lavellan makes a noise between a hum and a groan before turning his face even more into Bull’s shoulder. Lips press into Bull’s skin, chaste and quick.

Lavellan sighs and licks at his lips, swallowing a few times. He begins to rouse, though slow as he always does. Morning carries little favor with Bull’s little elf.

His hands come down Lavellan’s thighs, skin so deceptively soft hiding power. Lean muscles here, as with all of Lavellan’s body, but particularly developed. A destination oft traversed by Bull’s hands, in the name of primal need to _feel_. 

Lavellan props his chin up on Bull’s shoulder. He drowsily murmurs his lover’s name along the column of the Bull’s throat.

Bull closes his eyes and his mouth shapes a fond grin.

Duty calls, and the time for lingering fades.


End file.
